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So Aki Con was a small, local anime convention that took place over October 26-28 across the lake at the Bellevue Hilton. It was one of the most frustrating weekends ever, and I wasn’t the only one that felt that way. The backlash from artists in the week following the con was pretty damn vicious. Things have settled down since then, but only because time has passed, and not because any of the issues have been resolved. I was really busy in the time leading up to the con, and was really busy after — this is the longest I’ve ever delayed writing a con report, and for any other con, I think I would have just given up and let it go, but if any con needs to be written about, it’s Aki Con.

This is the most relevant photo of the convention.

And in fact, many, many, manyothersalreadyhave, in a much more timely manner than I. There is both a Tumblr and a Facebook group dedicated to calling out Aki Con on its bullshitastonishing lack of professionalism. I’m told a lot that I’m the only person who writes about artist experiences at conventions so extensively, so I think the fact that this many others have written about Aki Con is proof enough that it’s a convention with some really serious issues.

Pre-Con

I registered for Aki Con in March of last year, a good seven months before the convention. As a small convention (~3,500 estimated attendance?), it really annoyed me that the $75 table price did not include a weekend badge, which had to be purchased separately for $30, making the total cost to register $105. Compare to IKKiCON and San Japan 2011, which each had roughly 6,500 attendees and cost $100 for a table and one badge. Hell, compare to the last Anime Weekend Atlanta I attended in 2009 and the last MomoCon I attended in 2010. Both cost $100 for a table and two badges; AWA had 11,717 attendees that year and MomoCon had ~7,800. Case in point: Aki Con’s Artist Alley tables were hella expensive for a con its size.

Aki Con’s contract was poorly formatted and seemed pretty juvenile, but I figured they were a newer, less experienced con and let it go. I’ve seen the likes of it before with small college cons (Delta H Con came to mind…though maybe that should have been a warning sign). The contract specified that its tables were 1′ x 6′ though, which is tiiiiny. Seriously, do you know how short a foot is?? I emailed staff to check that there was no mistake in those numbers and was told that they would be that size…at minimum. This wasn’t especially reassuring, particularly because the staff member wrote in an abbreviated, lazy sort of way that bordered on unclear, but I decided to let that go too. Surely the tables couldn’t possibly be that small.

And I don’t hear from them ever again after that. Most artists apparently got an email about set-up and stuff a week before the convention, but I didn’t. :\

Sherlock about to harpoon Moriarty to break up the textwall.

I’m eternally grateful that Torikat reached out to me regarding Aki Con. As another Texan transplant to Washington state, we seem to have a fair bit in common and hit it off pretty well. She needed a place in the area to crash and I needed a ride across the lake every day, and so it was agreed that she and her friend (with a car) would crash at my place (~20 minutes from the hotel) for the weekend and we’d all drive back and forth every day. Tori had gone to Aki Con last year, so her previous experience was nice to hear about, especially since I wasn’t getting any more information from Aki Con itself. And really, I was just really glad to have someone to hang with at the con since I wouldn’t know anyone else. I was a little stressed about how our arrangements to work out, but I wasn’t terribly concerned about the convention itself. After JCCS, I was looking forward to being back amongst anime fans, my most familiar brand of nerd~. ;)

The week before Aki Con, I was hit with a really frustrating technological crisis at ‘Souls. Long story short, I went to bed Friday morning of the con at 5am after staying up all the previous day and only getting a pathetic amount of sleep the night before that. And Tori and her friend were supposed to pick me up at 6am. I’m usually very good about catnapping when I need to, ridiculous circumstances be damned, but I overslept my one hour alarm and woke when Tori texted me that they were there. This was not how I wanted to start my weekend. D;

But things will get better, right? I’ll be able to de-stress from my terrible week at a fun convention, right!? Three months after the fact, I put these rhetorical questions here to make myself laugh.

FRIDAY

It’s almost 7am when we get to the hotel. The lobby had no signs or anything pointing to registration, which we only knew to be on the floor below because that’s where it was last year. The mysterious email that I never got said badge pick-up and artist set-up started at 8:30am. The convention itself was supposed to open at 9am, so this was a crazy short set-up time, but we figured it’d be pretty slow in the morning anyway. We sat a while in the lobby cafe with scones and coffee, but got restless pretty quickly and finally headed downstairs at probably a quarter to eight. Good thing, I guess, because there was already a mess of a line.

This convention is already in chaos, so here is a Discord.

Apparently some people had been told that registration was at eight? But most of the mess was because no one seemed to know whether artists needed to stand in line with the regular attendees or not. There were probably a half dozen staff/volunteers at registration, but all of them seemed flustered and confused. Each had been told a different thing, and no apparent hierarchy amongst them meant that they didn’t whose information was more correct. Post-convention, one artist reported:

A while later someone comes up to us and says that artist alley people can skip the line. I was happy, as it was now AFTER 8:30 and I really only had 20 min now to set up before they opened. So me and a couple of people around me left the line and went to where we were directed. A new line formed. Then they told us that they didn’t know why we left the line, and we had to go back and stand in line like everyone else.

Tori and I had not been very far back in the general line, so managed to get our badges relatively quickly despite literally every staff person we spoke to being confused. It was only as we shuffled away from registration that a definitive, separate line was being formed for artists.

With our badges and programs in tow, we were now faced with the question: so where is Artist Alley? The mysterious pre-con email had not provided a map. Last year the Alley was apparently in the hallways around registration, but as there were no tables set up there this year, that couldn’t be the case. In the days before the convention, a few artists had apparently asked via email and Aki Con’s forums where the Alley would be. For some reason, staff didn’t seem very forthcoming with this information. The one answer that was eventually supplied was the cheeky, “it’s at the convention!”

When another artist first told us that the Alley was in the parking garage, I laughed it off. But we followed this artist, because she seemed to know where she was going. Turns out, she wasn’t kidding.

Remember: Aki Con is a convention on the tail end of October. In Washington state. In a city known nationwide for rain and gloom. And as it happened, it was raining that weekend. It was cold and wet outside, which meant it was also cold and wet inside the parking garage. Because it’s a freakin’ parking garage! The glass walls that kept us from being completely exposed to the outside did not do much to keep the cold out. There were weird industrial-looking heaters hooked up outside, blasting some pitiful amount of heat in through two open doors, but I couldn’t feel it at all. It was cold in the garage, and it got colder the longer we stayed there.

I mentioned it was wet too, but even garages have ceilings, right? We should have been kinda dry at least, right? HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Leaky buckets lined the ceiling. It was very classy. (Photo by Umeiwa)

There were puddles here and there on the concrete floor from people tracking them in, but the funny thing is that I actually didn’t notice the buckets for a fair while.

This was because I was too busy being angry about the tables, which ended up being a absurdly tiny 1.5’x6′ after all! You guys have seen my table at other conventions. I have no room for anything. I use up every bit of space I have on 2.5’x6′ tables and can feel crowded at even a 2.5’x8′ table. I did not have a fun time setting up at Aki Con. I wasn’t even worried anymore that we were setting up like ten minutes before the con was supposed to open; I just wanted to fit everything on the stupid table. Spots weren’t assigned, so Tori and I grabbed two tables on the end nearest to the decorated torii prop and the glass doors. The tables on the end facing the garage entrance were already taken, so we took the ones facing away.

The torii prop was actually really cool, and Aki Con had a ton of other neat props and sets scattered throughout the convention space, including a rather impressive model of the school in Soul Eater and a little field with the scarecrow from Howl’s Moving Castle. There were other torii set up here and there with signs for things, but the Artist Alley one was really poorly placed… You couldn’t really see it from where you came into the garage because it wasn’t really facing that direction, and even as you got closer, the LARP/foam-weapon fighting arena was in the way, so the entrance to the Alley was really, really difficult to see. The low ceilings of the garage made it hard to see far in general, and the whole place felt cramped and awkward. Even with the half-sized tables, the Artist Alley felt claustrophobic. There wasn’t a lot of space in the aisle, artists’ cubegrids and printwalls blocked a lot of things from view.

It’s hard to tell from this side, but I had no space behind this setup.

Because of the poor visibility, it also wasn’t until later that I realized the poor, poor dealers were also in the parking garage, which is labeled in the program as the “Exhibition Hall.” They were near the back of the garage and were fenced off from everything else by chain-link. It was the classiest. Full list of things in the “Exhibition Hall”? The Dealer’s Room, Artist Alley, the Haunted House, the arcade, table-top gaming, LARP, and food service. FOOD SERVICE. Remember that Anime Matsuri where people were grossed out by open containers of water and food service ladies finger-combing hair while preparing food? Serving food in a wet, moldy garage is worse.

And to top off Friday morning, things were abysmally slow.

And things didn’t pick up as the day went on.

Check out the puddles and mold! (Photo by Umeiwa)

It was a bit odd because there were people around. It was far from busy, but it wasn’t dead either. There was a casual flow of traffic through the afternoon, but no one was really even browsing, much less buying. It was disgusting in the garage to be sure, but I tend to forget about these things relatively quickly. Sitting behind my table, I couldn’t see the ceiling buckets from behind my printwall. I couldn’t see the gross floor in front of me. I was cold, but I dealt with it. It didn’t occur to me that probably a lot of people weren’t even bothering to cross from the hotel to the garage because it was raining outside. It didn’t occur to me that cosplayers wouldn’t want to get their costumes dripped on, or that many of them wouldn’t want to walk on the gross, wet floor of the garage. It didn’t occur to me that no one wanted to browse because no one wanted to be in such a dank environment long enough to do that.

And because these things didn’t occur to me then, I was really perplexed at how slow things were.

I wandered around the Alley a couple of times. I wandered through Dealer’s. I have never gotten up so many times at a convention out of sheer boredom. I was glad for the opportunity to check out and chat with other artists, including PurpleKecleon/PK, who I am a huge fan of, but the general mood around the Alley was pretty glum. Everyone was freezing. Some artists were right under buckets and/or leaks and were getting dripped on at their tables. Dealers weren’t doing much better, though I got to geek out a little with one of the ladies at Twinbells Doujinshi over Gundam SEED and Asucaga even though they weren’t carrying any Asucaga doujin I wanted and didn’t already have.

This is how much space I had behind the table, that is to say, none whatsoever.

I didn’t have any room to work at the table, but eventually I figured something out so I could do some art trades with Tori to occupy my mind-crushingly bored and sleep-deprived self. The Artist Alley was supposed to be 24 hours, which usually means “I’ll leave when it slows.” But it was slow the whole day, and even before sundown, I was ready to be out of there.

The next fun bit doesn’t have a lot to do with Aki Con itself, though it certainly added to the frustration of the weekend. Tori’s friend who was originally supposed to be driving us back and forth from my apartment that weekend? Bailed. The person who dropped us off that morning was another friend doing Tori a favor, but that person wasn’t staying in town for the weekend. So we were technically stranded at the convention until we figured something out. The bus was an option, though the nearest bus stop was a half mile from the hotel (which was the original reason I wanted a ride). And since the Alley isn’t secure, we really ought to pack up our product every night and bring it back every morning, which makes busing even less attractive. Tori asked one of the volunteers if there was anywhere we’d be able to stow things. The answer was no, but we got permission to leave our stuff with one of the dealers behind their chain-link fence. Better than nothin’!

With our stuff stowed, we decided we’d just take the bus the rest of the weekend. Except we really didn’t feel like looking for the bus stop in the dark in the rain after a pretty crappy day at the con. It was around 7pm we finally bailed. I hate bothering people for favors in general, much less last-minute ones, but I sucked it up and called my friend Ravi to come get us and drop us off at my apartment, where we sat around shooting the breeze for five hours before crashing into exhausted sleep.

Drip, drip, drip. (Photo by Umeiwa)

Friday was my worst selling day since I started keeping records. I think I sold 5 things in 9 hours. In my second worst Friday, I made four times that amount. I spent more on coffee than I made back at Aki Con on Friday. I was sleep deprived and grumpy and the coffee was overpriced, but it still wasn’t that much coffee. And even in the terrible conditions, I was really, really baffled by the whole thing. I didn’t feel especially optimistic about the rest of the weekend, but even so, never had I believed so strongly in it can’t possibly get worse.

SATURDAY

And for what it’s worth, it didn’t get worse. For me, anyway.

Laaaaadies.

After sleeping seven whole hours, which seemed like forever and ever, we left the apartment around 8am and got on a bus to Bellevue. It was drizzling and misting outside, but that’s pretty much the extent of rain around here anyway. There was a Starbucks right by the bus stop on the Bellevue side, so we picked up coffee, and the half mile walk to the hotel wasn’t so bad.

We got there around 9:30am, but there was basically no one around. There wasn’t even anyone checking for badges at the entrance of the Exhibition Hall parking garage, despite Dealer’s Room being open and Artist Alley being 24hr. The lack of security would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so sad. Dealer’s Room protected from theft by just a chain-link fence? In whose mind is this a good idea?

I sat idly at my table for a while but wasn’t able to stand it for long. I got up to browse again, and Aki Con thus became one of my most spendy conventions. After the amazing slowness and lack of sales on the first day, I just felt extra inclined to patronize my fellow vendors. With over fifty tables, the Artist Alley was huge for a convention Aki Con’s size — this might have also contributed to the slowness, among other things — but it was very well-rounded. There was a good mix of skill levels and wares being offered. I think there were a larger number of first-time Alley artists than I’m used to seeing, but as a small, local con, this wasn’t surprising. It was sad to hear about the crappy time a lot of them were having. :(

Oh, look, fake Pokemon plush.

Wandering through the Dealer’s Room, I found Jiuge and bought an embarrassingly large number of prints from her.

And then I spotted a whole bunch of Pokemon plush that were probably bootlegs. Post-convention research confirmed as much, and while I didn’t look too closely at anything other than the Pokemon, other artists reported an alarming number of other bootlegs in the Dealer’s Room, including a lot of fake Alpaca plush. On one hand, most of these were pretty impressive fakes and it’s hard to tell if you don’t know what you’re looking for; it is not hard to imagine that the dealers themselves probably didn’t know. On the other hand, it’s still obvious they didn’t order these goods from the manufacturer. <_<

I felt like I wandered around a lot, but even with all the wandering, I didn’t actually pass a lot of time. I sketched at the table, even though it was awkward and uncomfortable. I did an art trade with PK. I sketched some more.

PK’s half of our trade!

There were a lot of nice cosplayers to look at, though I’ve gotten pretty lazy about taking pictures in general, and unfortunately, I lost about three months of data in November because of my own idiocy, including most of my Aki Con photos. What’s in this report is what I managed to salvage from the wreckage, along with photos from other artists.

Some people had trouble getting reception in the garage, but I wasn’t one of them, shockingly. As such, I at least could tweet incessantly because there was nothing else to do. I continued to get up and wander a lot. In addition to being bored out of my mind, it was also still freezing, and walking around helped with that a little. I’d never felt so sure that I wasn’t missing any sales by being away from the table. I did more art trades. I did merch trades. Anything to keep occupied and to move things from the table.

Saturday at Aki Con was better than Friday, but this doesn’t say much at all. Saturday at Aki Con was slower than Friday at almost every other convention I’ve been to. A lot of artists were worried about breaking even on their $105 table price. Most of the artists were locals, so it’s good they didn’t have too much in travel and lodging costs, but everyone still has print costs, time and labor costs. A lot of people said they probably wouldn’t bother with Sunday at all.

The afternoon dragged on forever, and by 6pm, I was ready to leave again. Tori found a friend with extra space in the con hotel, so she decided to spend the night there to avoid bus fare and travel time. It was raining a little harder than it was that morning, so dawdled for another hour before finally leaving, walking the distance to the bus stop, and catching a 7:30 bus home.

On the bus, I saw someone on their way to Steamcon, which was the very same weekend in the very same city. I wonder how that convention went? Better, undoubtedly.

SUNDAY

Not in a hurry at all, I got to the con around 10am. I made a quick round through the Alley and Dealer’s, then finally sat down probably at 10:30. And in the first hour Sunday, I made more than I did on Friday. An hour after that, I’d made more than Saturday. I was finally getting commissions, too. Hallelujah.

Then someone pointed out that the Aki Con program includes a “con survival guide,” which includes the following tip (sic):

If you ask politely on Sunday some vendors can be bargained down for a cheaper prices because they are simply trying to clear inventory.

No.

The note really rubbed me the wrong way. It doesn’t matter that yes, some vendors will do Sunday sales and deals. It doesn’t matter that plenty of others balk at the suggestion that they might be so desperate to move product. It’s one thing for individuals to give casual advice to friends suggesting Sunday shopping. It’s another thing entirely for a convention, an organization, to suggest to its attendees that they should try to haggle with its vendors. It’s irresponsible and unprofessional. As a told someone on Twitter, a convention has a responsibility to both its attendees and its vendors. A con isn’t responsible for ensuring its vendors turn a profit, but neither should it be trying to cheat them out of proper sales. And a con’s concern for attendees should be safety and entertainment, not getting cheap deals on vendor goods.

Oh, here is a nice picture of workers emptying overfilled buckets. In case you forgot that we were in a ~*parking garage*~. (Photo by Umeiwa)

Honestly though, even though the note in the program was in very bad form, I don’t think it was the reason sales went up so dramatically Sunday. Maybe a quarter of the artists in the Alley didn’t come back Sunday, or only came back to pack up and leave, so there was less competition. It was also not raining on Sunday, so probably more attendees decided to finally, finally check out this “Exhibition Hall” thing across the way from the hotel. There’s usually not as much going on event-wise Sunday, and a fair number of people do make an effort to spend out their budgets on the last day. It was also not as freezing in the garage on Sunday. All the little things that together matter so much.

So Sunday easily became my best day of the convention, netting more than Friday and Saturday combined, and bringing my total for the weekend to something that is actually fairly reasonable for a ~3,500 person convention. At that point though, it didn’t even matter anymore.

Aki Con was a frustrating, frustrating weekend, and I was very ready to leave that afternoon. Luckily for both Tori and I, we both found rides at the last minute, so she didn’t have to be stranded in town, and I didn’t have to lug my weight in con gear half mile to the bus stop. Take your victories where you can get them, I suppose.

I told you this was a spendy con for me. No, that is totally not five different prints of Loki shut up.

OVERALL

It’s a foregone conclusion that Aki Con was not a good weekend for a vast majority of vendors — a lot of artists definitely didn’t break even. In the end, I did okay, but the percentages are terribly skewed. I made an astounding 7% of my weekend sales on Friday, 37% on Saturday, and 56% on Sunday. Compare to overall averages of 25% Friday, 47% Saturday, and 28% Sunday. I’m still pretty baffled at just how slow Friday and Saturday were, because again, there were people around — they just weren’t shopping. We were in deplorable conditions, okay, but it is still weird to me that with so many people around, so little product was being moved.

Maybe I’m too tolerant? Or blissfully ignorant? I adjust and overlook things easily and sometimes have a hard time seeing just how problematic and serious a given issue is. I’ve been to smaller conventions, conventions with poor traffic flow and management, conventions with lacking security, with organization issues, with staff drama, with a lack of signage, etc, etc. But I guess none of those other conventions had all of these issues at the same time, and other problems to boot.

Cauldrons were a festive “solution” to the leaky roof problem. (Photo by Umeiwa)

Everyone likes lists, right?

Summary of Problems at Aki Con (Before and At the Convention)

Cost: I mentioned it at the beginning. The cost of tabling at Aki Con is grossly high for a con its size.

Location: The best part of the parking garage story is that apparently, Aki Con has done this before. In 2009, artists were also put in a parking garage. I don’t think it was in the same hotel, Aki Con faced a lot of criticism for it, only to sweep the whole thing under the rug. A few people have mentioned that other conventions have actually used garages for space before, including Kumoricon, but really the issue was less that it was a garage and more that it was a really, really shitty garage. Give me a garage with clean floors, proper heating, no mold, and no leaks, and I assure you there would have been far fewer complaints.

Temperature: It was freezing in the garage all of Friday and Saturday. Things were a little better Sunday. There was heat being pumped in intermittently, but it was not very effective.

Wetness, Mold, & Humidity: Several artists complained of allergic reactions and illness triggered by the mold in the garage. The general wetness was also just…gross. People were stepping in (and slipping in) puddles, their product was getting dripped on, and more than once, one of the buckets on the ceiling overflowed and dumped a gallon or two of dirty water on someone. Yes, really. The humidity also warped prints and reduced the effectiveness of tape (which meant my print wall came down a lot). Honestly, the garage wasn’t even a place I wanted to keep my car, much less hang out in for three days. That the Hilton even keeps the place around in such a condition is surprising enough; that Aki Con deemed it fit to put people in here for long periods of time is bewildering, to say the least.

Odor?: A lot of people complained that the garage was smelly, but I have a pretty crappy sense of smell, especially in the cold, so I can’t comment here.

Placement: There is a wide open driveway between where registration is in the hotel and the entrance of the “Exhibition Hall.” Standing safely inside the hotel, it’s hard to see that there’s anything going on way over there in the other building. And when it’s raining outside, why would anyone bother to look twice? Also: being a parking garage, there is no bathroom there. The nearest bathroom is across the drive to the hotel and upstairs in the hall opposite the lobby. That is a long walk, man.

Signage: There were no signs in the main hotel lobby directing anyone to anything. There were no signs from main areas of the convention inside the hotel to direct people across the driveway to the “Exhibition Hall.” There were no signs within the “Exhibition Hall” pointing to Artist Alley, which was difficult to see from the entrance. As a result, quite a few attendees claimed not to know that we even existed.

Security: Badge checking at the entrance of the “Exhibition Hall” happened maybe 25% of the time that I saw. Because there was no bathroom in the garage, and because I was guzzling coffee like nobody’s business, I left a lot to hike upstairs in the hotel to use the restroom. Only rarely did someone check for my badge upon my return. Part of the problem was definitely that there were like six doors along the glass wall of the garage and if there was anyone checking badges at all, they were always on the far end of the wall, making it pretty easy for people to sneak in the other side. It seemed like they really needed more staff in general though. I read later that friends sharing badges and/or simply not paying admission at Aki Con was a very common thing.

Safety: Yeahhhh…

Electricity: Remember how the arcade was also in the parking garage? And arcades run on electricity, yeah? So there was a big mess of power strips, cords and plugs in the middle of that area, sitting around in drippy puddle water. I wish someone had gotten a picture of it. It looked baaaaad. I don’t know how it didn’t explode. Artists and dealers were also allowed power on a first come, first serve basis, but apparently there were some issues with this and no one in DR or AA had power most of Saturday or Sunday. I don’t use electricity at the table personally though, so I don’t know the details here.

Food: I really have no idea how Aki Con got away with serving food in the garage. I don’t know how the food vendors could have set up in there and not thought “Wow, this is a pretty shitty idea.”

Other/Health: See sections above regarding mold and coldness. I’ve also heard that Aki Con has quite the underage drinking problem; I didn’t really see any of this myself, but I took off pretty early every day.

Staff Presence: Or lack thereof. It’s sometimes hard making the distinction between con staff and volunteers, especially since at many (non-profit) conventions, all of the staff are essentially volunteers. Few get paid for their time. Aki Con is a for-profit convention, so let’s make the distinction here: henceforth when I say “staff,” I mean “people who run the convention and get paid.” When I say “volunteer,” I mean “people not getting paid, but who help out at the convention.”

The thing about Aki Con was that it was woefully obvious that there wasn’t anyone with authority around. The confusion at registration/artist check-in proved as much. All of them were volunteers and no one there knew what was going on. Who was calling the shots? Where was the actual staff? And why hadn’t they informed these poor volunteers of what they were supposed to be doing? Saturday morning, PK had her table moved by volunteers because her stuff was getting dripped on, so there’s that. You could always find volunteers hanging out at registration, but it was difficult to spot them in the crowd because the only thing marking them as volunteers were tiny labels on their badges. And staff? I don’t think I saw a staff person all weekend.

On the tail end of Saturday, I remember a girl going around to a few of the tables to check up on artists. This was probably the Artist Alley head, though I get the feeling she was probably also a volunteer, rather than a paid staff member, just from the complete…lack of authority she exuded. We didn’t speak, but other artists’ reports confirm as much: this girl had no power. I didn’t approach her at the convention ’cause honestly…I don’t know what I could have said.

There was little that could have been done to fix anything at the actual convention, after all. It was way too late to, you know, decide not to put everyone in a parking garage. Could I have asked for a refund? There was no refund clause in the joke of a contract. For all the shittiness of the situation, and ignoring probable safety violations and a bland lack of professionalism, were they actual violating any written terms? I dunno. It’s hard to think in these terms while still at the con. But even if I had spoken to this Artist Alley head, it probably would have accomplished nothing other than making her feel bad.

General Lack of Professionalism: You know, in recent years, I’ve made an effort to not be as pedantic about grammar and spelling, but surely I can’t be wrong to expect such things to be used properly by a business? I know Japanese cartoon conventions aren’t the most classy organizations in the world, but we can still have some standards, right? We can still run contracts through a grammar check or something, right? I don’t think I’m asking a lot here. A business needs to at least make an effort to look like it cares about its customers. Answer questions in a forthcoming manner, elaborate, keep everyone in the loop. It does not instill confidence in anyone to have a correspondence with a representative of an organization wherein answers to questions are vague and few things are capitalized or punctuated.

GarageCon 2012. (Photo by Umeiwa)

I was not impressed with Aki Con or how anything was planned or handled there, but I ended up doing okay overall, and I had a good time bonding with other artists in our collective misery. I’m really happy to have been able to hang out with Tori, to have been able to do an art trade with PK, and to have been able to speak with so many others. The cosplayers and attendees in general at Aki Con were great, and there’s no denying that the multitude of props were awesome. It’s not hard to see that Aki Con has the potential to be a pretty awesome convention.

So truthfully, even with the amazing number of problems I experienced and witnessed over the weekend, I was pretty ready to just let the whole thing go. On Sunday, most of me believed that surely, surely Aki Con would be able to learn from its mistakes here. I didn’t know that I’d want to come back, but I had not written off the possibility yet.

But the way the staff handled the fallout after the convention had me make up my mind pretty fast.

As long as Aki Con remains under the same management, I will not go back. And I hope other vendor will do well to avoid it and to spread the word to avoid it. I hope attendees will make an effort to read up on the convention’s bad practices and make educated decisions about whether they want to support such an organization. I’m cynical enough to believe that the latter will not happen, but I’m just callous enough to hope that Aki Con gets what it deserves, eventually.

FALLOUT

(or, “how to escalate a shitstorm”)

Aki Con posted a thread soliciting feedback on its forums at 1:10pm Sunday afternoon. Within hours, it had ballooned to a dozen pages. Many new issues came to light as vendors and attendees alike came forward with various horror stories and bad experiences. Roughly two days later, there were 24 pages (~200 comments) of negative responses ranging from disappointed to indignant to completely outraged accompanied by a handful of very poor attempts by staff at damage control, if it could be called that. Rather than acknowledge that there were any problems, staff backpeddled, contradicted themselves, accused artists of inventing tales, and generally acted dismissive, defensive and immature.

The first 20 pages of the feedback thread were screencapped and are archived here. All 24 pages, sans the staff’s final reply, is archived in HTML format here. The complete 24 pages of the feedback thread, along with other related forum threads like the Artist Alley-specific feedback thread, are also downloadable in PDF format here. None of these make for very comfortable reading, but if you’re interested in trucking through the mess, the whole thing is kind of entertaining in that “I can’t believe this actually happened” sort of way.

It’s Tumblrrrr.

Post-Convention Addendum to the Summary of Problems

It’s really unfortunate that neither Tumblr nor Facebook‘s formats are very conducive to sequential reading. Both became useful rallying points for artists after the lockdown of the forum, and there is a wealth of information and testimonials gathered on both. Issues brought up or revealed in the days following the convention that I have not already mentioned in my aforementioned personal observations include:

After 9pm, all the lights went out in the parking garage to facilitate the Haunted House. This was mentioned in the email Aki Con sent to (most) artists, but is still pretty ridiculous regardless. Forcing vendors to provide their own light source will always be an absurd notion to me.

There was basically no staff/volunteer coordination and delegation of power was a joke. One volunteer reports:

I was there at opening on friday and for the first several hours I didn’t even know where the AA was, so when people asked I had to apologize and show them the map. The only thing I knew about AA was that someone should be there checking badges- which I did for a while- and that was about it. The best I could do for complaints was send them to the Registration desk but they frequently had people who weren’t high enough up to help or do anything.

I personally was volunteering and even I had a hard time finding staff to ask questions, ask to have someone give me a break and the like. On top of that- and I don’t know if this was only me or what- but as a volunteer I would have thought that they’d have told me about some rules to uphold, where things are, how to handle things. I got pretty much nothing.

My coworker was the one “coordinating” the AA and the vendors and we talked about this mess yesterday. They kind of just tossed her in and then didn’t really help her in any way and wouldn’t let her actually help people. Supposedly the head of Akicon wanted everything to go through her first but then she wouldn’t even respond to my coworker’s phone calls or texts.

Someone called the Hilton, which confirmed that Aki Con is no longer welcomed at the hotel for subsequent events.

Kerosene heat was (allegedly) being used to (attempt to) heat the parking garage. Kerosene heat comes with fun gases like carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide, and the garage was not very well ventilated.

Manga Kissaten, LLC., the company that runs Aki Con, was allegedlybanned from Sakura-Con for selling bootlegs.

It is illegal in Washington state for for-profit business to employ volunteers. Whoops.

There were other, more basic complaints that were less shocking and less unique to Aki Con, though because it was Aki Con, they added more fuel to the fire. A lot of attendees felt the con in general was very disorganized. Panels were never on time, if they happened at all; traffic chokepoints in the hotel were chaotic, and that the Haunted House cost an additional fee on top of con admission annoyed a lot of people. The lack of badge checking came up a lot, as well as general security, and the difficulty of reaching actual staff during the convention.

The purposeful withholding of information caused a few artists to demand refunds, or at least comped tables for next year. They accused Aki Con of fraud, deception, and willful negligence. But really, most people, and I among them, were just looking for an admission of mistakes, someone taking responsibility, and a sincere apology. We just wanted assurance that things wouldn’t happen again the way they did. It is really…not hard to see how powerful a heartfelt “sorry” is in a situation like this.

In fact, a convention organizer from a different con in a different part of the country chimed in and apologized on behalf of conventions everywhere. A fewother con organizers threw in their support of artists/vendors on the matter of Aki Con as well. Meanwhile, Aki Con staff made fools of themselves in the feedback thread.

Artist Alley.

Staff Responses

Here are some of the responses we got, quoted verbatim from the feedback thread. The attitude behind these comments are what pissed me off the most. It’s hard to tell if Aki Con staff is just completely delusional and incapable of accepting responsibility, or if they’re just playing dumb in an effort to make themselves appear the victim.

Regarding the general state of the parking garage:

the hotel assured us it would be clean. they didnt follow thru and yes thats on us for trusting them.

As far as the look of the space we wanted it to look like a haunted creep area…

Regarding the parking garage being a fire hazard:

weasked the fire marshal to come by and he said it was a safe location and gave us props for installing extra smoke alarms out of pocket. my dads a fire fighter and i take that very seriously so dont say stuff you dont know about.

the electrical boxes where water proof out door models.

And another was worried about the cords and drips. I expressed to her that the power boxes and cords were made for outdoor use. Then went to double check. Though those power boxes do look scare and strange they are very safe.

Other general commentary, including blatant lies regarding tables being under buckets and the temperature of the garage:

Sadly it seems we are in a no win situation with artists as they hated the halls, and complained heavily about noise, ppl congregating, ppl bumping them. So we gave aa an entire area, we made sure no tables were in drip zones, brought in heater ( it was warmer in the exhibition hall then the main building)

There were no tables below buckets if you look at the pictures you can see that those a empty area we didn’t sell because we were worried about drips on vendor or AA tables.

The forums were only the only venue where we were able to get responses from staff. @replies to their Twitter were ignored, and comments to Aki Con’s Facebook page were swiftly deleted. A few artists emailed in directly, but the replies they got were canned and mostly reiterated what was said on the forums. The illegal volunteer thing didn’t come to light until after the forums were locked down, so unfortunately, there has been no staff response on that matter whatsoever.

“Aki Con Feedback Team”

Two days after the forums are locked, it is on 4chan of all places that we see Aki Con’s first somewhat professional response. Ed Altorfer introduces himself in an /egl/ thread about Aki Con as a member of the “Aki Con Feedback Team,” which formed that day. The Aki Con thread is archived here in full, but the relevant portion is in this subthread.

Immediately, artists and attendees write him off as some poor PR guy hired to take over damage control after the actual con staff failed so miserably. While Altorfer denies that he’s just “damage control,” he does admit to having only been on the job for “a few hours.” He confirms that Aki Con is for-profit. Altorfer also apparently made a deviantART account to post a single comment on an artist’s con report. He directs people to a service called UserVoice to submit their feedback. Artists comply and are very direct with what they want to see happen. The guy hangs out in the 4chan thread for a few hours, then is never heard from again.

Several artists, including myself, email him at the newly provided email address. As far as I know though, none of us have yet gotten a response.

Aki Con staff spends all year building props. These props are, admittedly, very cool, but they are not as essential to the convention as, say, organization, communication, and common sense.

Artist Retaliation

With the radio silence from Aki Con staff and the “PR guy,” artist attempt to retaliate in a variety of ways.

Some contact the local media, some file complaints via the BBB, some open Paypal disputes, and some threaten legal action. The media is unresponsive, and the BBB efforts are mostlyfruitless. Artists do manage to put their Paypal account on hold, but this doesn’t seem to have been as impactful as we might have hoped.

There were at least two artists who seemed pretty serious about their want of pursuing legal action, but there haven’t been any updates on that that I’ve heard. Some thought the illegal volunteers thing would surely get Aki Con shut down, but that isn’t that easy either. The problem, of course, is that legal action takes a lot of time, money, and effort, and for all our frustrations, it’s far easier to just accept our losses and move on from it. This about sums it up.

We made a big stink, we spread the word to as many other artists as we can, we decide amongst ourselves to boycott Aki Con, but in the end… our noise is just noise. Aki Con staff has made it more than clear that our concerns mean nothing to them, that they will admit to doing nothing wrong, and that are completely uninterested in bettering their convention based on others’ feedback. This will be swept under the rug, like their 2009 problems were, and there will still be enough people ignorant of the whole ordeal to buy tickets to the next Aki Con.

Three Months Later

Aki Con recently relaunched their site for 2013. They’re moving from Bellevue to Seatac, and have apparently decided to include a weekend badge with AA table purchases. Other than that, nothing really seems to have changed. There has been no word from staff since November. They want to pretend that everything was fine, and the fallout was just a bunch of liars and trolls, a bunch of ungrateful artists who are never happy, and who can’t be satisfied. They don’t need artists. It’s whatever to them.

The new hotel this year probably means there will not be a parking garage involved. This will automatically address a lot of the problems with Aki Con in 2012, but as there’s no indication that staff has actually learned its lesson, who’s to say some other disaster isn’t waiting to happen?

I’m really hoping that artists will stick to their guns and decide not to go. I’m really hoping that dealers also remember well their crappy experience and decide not to go too. Dealers were, unsurprisingly, a lot less vocal online, but they did just as poorly as we, and are surely just as irritated about the whole ordeal? I know many dealers talk to each other and share information the way we artists try to do, so here’s to hoping. Artist Alley is treated like an incidental bonus thing at most conventions; no one comes looking for us, though they enjoy it when we’re there. The Dealer’s Room, however, is a main attraction. Dealers deciding to boycott would hurt Aki Con far more than artists. Here’s to hoping, but who knows.

So yeah, that was Aki Con. It was poorly organized convention run by some very immature people. I will not be going back, and I hope you won’t ever go either. I maintain that the con could very easily be a good one, but staff’s attitude has to do a complete 180 for that to happen.

Wow, I heard it was pretty awful but man… I was at SteamCon that weekend, and there were a lot of people fleeing Akicon. Now I know why!

I won’t attend even though the new location is like 10 minutes from my apartment. I’m surprised the Double Tree accepted them, as that’s where Norwescon has been held for the last 10+ years. It’s so depressing to see a convention treat it’s artists like that. :(

“Artist Alley is treated like an incidental bonus thing at most conventions; no one comes looking for us, though they enjoy it when we’re there.”
Not true! For me, anyway. I LOVE going to Artist Alley. I like to see what people have made, and the artists usually are the best people to talk to.

Further details I may add…
Several times in this they name dropped me, and called me a liar.
Also, one of the two women running a con made a rather threatening FB post on their personal account about punching “a certain liar”.

Aki actually seems to think that I’m some kind of a ring leader here, as they continue to name drop me, and a few others. O.o

But heres the fun part…. I was on THEIR side, supporting them, and arguing for them, back in 2009 when the first GarageCon occurred. I regret it now, as I now understand how those poor artists must have felt.

But I was amazed that my reward for attending Aki Con every year since it’s first year… Was to be name dropped and yelled at in the feedback, after they betrayed my trust and wronged everyone at GarageCon.

Aki Con is currently claiming that them not being allowed at the Hilton is a lie…
My best friend, and table partner, was the one who made that call. I was in the room listening when she did, and the woman from the Hilton said that they were not welcome back.

Either Aki continues to lie, or the Hilton is a sad little establishment as well.

Most likely both.

I’m ashamed to have stood by them and defended them. They put on a pretty face, they play innocent, and if you aren’t being directly scammed by them, you never know. ):

Many attendees just “had fun”, so they refuse to believe everyone else didn’t. They side with Aki, they believe that because they had a good time, inside the hotel and warm, that we’re just blowing this out of proportion. I supported Aki Con for years, and I understand how they think… But it’s important to get our story out there, in hopes it can bring more attendees to understand that even if they had a fun time, they were supporting an unsavory “convention”.

Thank you for this report. It’s long, well cited, has everything there, and linked up… I’ll be sure to spread this around, it really matters to us all. :)

PS. The kicked out of Sakura thing isn’t just alleged, there are a few higher ups at SakuraCon who can verify it, and I have heard a more detailed version of the story directly from someone who had to help them clear out, after they were caught selling bootlegs.

As long as this is, I knew I’d forget some things, so thanks a bunch for the additional details. I do hope this gets spread around a good bit, especially now since Aki Con is open for registration again. I wonder if their forums will ever come back…

I’m sure they will. They brought forums back after the 2009… After moving to a different host altogether, if I recall. My memory is a little fuzzy on that incident.

I think they’ll bring them back, I’m just not sure how they think they’re going to deal with the artists who will, no doubt, return to make demands.

I’m curious to see what their next action will be… I replied to their pitiful little BBB response, and so far their ignoring that again. So I think they’ll be stamped with another F, after which they’ll do exactly what they did the first time, and try and keep the BBB case open, in an endless loop of blatant lies.

Even now I just don’t understand the level of stupidity they sunk to… An apology, and admittance of guilt, even if they were lying through their teeth, could have gotten them out of all this drama. I really don’t understand their thought process.

(Im the one who made the PDFs and after the site went down I felt bad that I used print view and not not just print the page, sorry)

The Seat-Tac Holiday Inn is not much better for space issues. Unless they using tons of hotel rooms for function space (been around enough that I remember doing that) it will possibly have less good function space.

Since I was one of, if not the, person who discovered the “volunteer” issue (thanks to a friend who pointed me in that direction), I’m personally upset that nothing’s been able to be done. I’ve been in employment situations where the conditions were horrible, and I was denied wages, and I’d love for nothing more than to take the business owner down, but without any records, it’s my word against his, and I’d never win. This is a much more cut-and-dry case, with documented proof that Aki-Con is a) not only accepting, but ASKING FOR unpaid volunteers, and b) offering to sign off on community service (which I’m fairly sure constitutes fraud), straight off their website, yet nothing has been/can be done?

Between this and the hell you artists were put through, I can’t believe that they haven’t even gotten a proverbial slap on the wrist for everything they’ve done. I went the first year, and from everything I’ve heard, it’s just gone downhill from there.

I also think it’s pretty silly that nothing has been done about what seems to be pretty clear-cut illegal behaviour, but if we absolutely need a volunteer to file a complaint or to testify, then I’m not sure it’s going to happen. I don’t know any of the volunteers, but it sounds like most of them are either still on the side of Aki Con for whatever reason, or they just don’t want to get involved, which is understandable enough.

With this out in the open now, it probably…wouldn’t be hard for someone with the intention of calling Aki Con out on illegal volunteers to just volunteer for the sole purpose of reporting them after, but that still takes plotting and another ten months to the actual convention.

You know, I bet all we would probably need to do is volunteer, sign off on the paperwork, and then send it off to labor and industries. As long as you have proof of an illegal contract and that you have been brought on as a volunteer at a for-profit, that may be enough without actually showing up. It’s a long shot, but you never know.

On a side note, another idea occurred to me. Why not protest the convention? Stand outside with signs denouncing their treatment of artists and illegal activities. Get enough people and it’s sure to draw a lot of attention, maybe even a little media coverage finally.

That’s a good point about just grabbing the paperwork, though I think most people are just wary of the personal time/involvement necessary to follow up, and the possibility of getting tied up in a legal battle with Aki Con just because you’re the person to report it.

Protesting is a pretty awesome idea, but it also puts people “out there” physically. While Aki Con does accuse artists of being “braver on the Internet,” there’s a big difference between confronting the staff on a one-on-one basis and drawing the attention of a lot of attendees/passerbyers/media in public. Also, since Aki Con is again on the same weekend as SteamCon, I think a lot of people are just gonna go there instead. :>

I don’t mean to shoot down all the nice suggestions since I do want Aki Con to get what it deserves, but you can see why most artists have resigned to just burying the hatchet. D;

Well, I at least plan on keeping an eye on their van. We all know it’ll be parked outside of SakuraCon, where it shouldn’t be. But that’s why I’ll be parked out there too.

Aki is going to be quite aways away from me this year, but I may go. If I’m the only one wanting to really protest, I may not do it… But I will at least be lurking around the areas that I won’t need a badge, and keeping an eye on the whole thing. If I spot one thing out of line, the fire marshal is being called, and I will try again at contacting the media.

Kiriska, you’re probably right. I was angry enough to want to interject and do these things myself, but odds are it would not be worth the effort. Worse yet, they could flip the case on me and press harassment charges, and I certainly don’t have the money to hire an attorney if that were to happen. At this point, I think we just have to hope that being vocal of what happened there makes people think twice about attending. I can tell from all their reactions that the Pelhams and some of the key volunteers lack the capacity to understand that what they did was both immoral and illegal, so I am not optimistic at seeing any improvements at this Aki-con. We’ll just have to let the chips fall where they may.

Suni Moon-Given Aki-con’s track record, they sure have a lot of nerve to park that van outside Sakura-con. Do you know if they actually sell badges out of that van? Because if they are and if they are parked on private property (I believe they were parked at the Sheraton a couple years back), all you have to do is go into the establishment and ask if they have permission to be soliciting on their property. If they do not, they will either ask them to leave or possibly call law enforcement to remove them from the premises. As far as solicitation on public or city property, I will have to research more, but I do believe that you must get a permit from the city to do that as well.

From what I heard from someone dealing with them at SakuraCon, they park their van on the curb, on public ground, and any time they try to get rid of them…. They’re told they have 48 hours or so to leave. Which does a lot of good getting them away from a weekend convention. There’s no keeping them away, and so far as I know, they do sell badges there.

I’m thinking about printing up some little pamplets to hand out.

And yeah, we really need to walk on eggshells. If the Pelhams try to sue anyone for harassment, I’m probably up on the top ten targets list… Partially because they confuse me with my best friend and table partner at AA. They seem to think we’re the same person, and since she’s done a lot to them, including making that call to the Hilton, they’re not happy.

Pamphlets is actually a pretty nice idea, and this way, you could kind of avoid direct contact with them — you’d just have to be near their van and intercept as many would-be customers as possible, without “harassing” the Pelhams yourself.

Suni, I’d be more than happy to dedicate some of my time to help pass out pamphlets either at Sakura Con or during the weekend at Aki (They’re moving just down the street from me. Greeeeeeeaaaaat…).

I wasn’t a vendor or artist but I was planning on going as an artist this year. That’s not going to happen now. Unless I see that things have obviously changed, I don’t think that I’ll ever go back even as an attendee. I was shocked to see the conditions that artists and vendors were put into and even more amazed that the con did basically nothing to apologize…

No head hanging needed, lol. But yeah, even if they were up to code when the event began (which I doubt), doesn’t mean they didn’t proceed to then do things that weren’t after the fire marshal left. If a cord burnt up, it obviously wasn’t waterproof or was faulty and I’m sure that would have been caught had someone actually looked at it.

I also wonder about the food situation. If a fire marshal has to do a check, did they also not need a health inspector to clear them as well? I’m 99.99999% certain that they would never have passed with dripping water. Furthermore, how did they run the place with no sinks? Cause last time I checked, garages don’t have them and dedicated hand washing stations are a must for food service (less there’s an exception for events like this, but I think they would need a portable sink in that case?).

Yes, handwashing stations are required for anyone handling food, but if it’s all pre-cooked food where they’re never required to glove up and touch anything, they may be exceptions. None that I know of, or were mentioned in the food handlers’ permit test I just took to renew mine, but there may be some.

Mother of God. I’ve had some pretty shitty convention experiences, but this definitely takes the cake! I’m doing my best to spread the word and let people know this is NOT a convention they want to attend!

You know, to have any credibility whatsoever, you will need to elaborate. I have written more than 8000 words on the topic of the con, there are 24 pages of feedback, there are tons and tons of Tumblr posts, and there is a very long 4chan thread as well — that is a LOT of stuff to slap with an overarching “bullshit” label, and not very believable as a result.

One of the greatest complaints about AkiCon is its amazing lack of responsiveness and issues with communication, and defensive comments like this, which really give no information at all, while the artists have been very detailed and, in my case, verbose, puts AkiCon in an even worse light.

So really, if you honestly believe that AkiCon’s actions are justified and that all of the literature and photos and evidence that artists have put online are “bullshit,” I invite you to kindly elaborate.

Before Aki-con took their own forums down, you could have seen for yourself the thread where I was repeatedly ignored for a period of no less than 6 months (before I finally gave up) on trying to see if there was space left in artist alley or the vendors hall still available. Rather than answering me on the board, they sent me to facebook, where I got no definite answer there either. Furthermore, they wanted me to send in money without even knowing if there was space or not. There was no way I was going to send in that amount of money without knowing for certain what was going on. This lack of organization is unquestioningly unprofessional. It’s a fact, plain simple, as the others have said.

You cannot just sit there and discredit people’s first hand experiences as if they didn’t happen just because they upset you. By doing that, you are displaying the same lack of maturity as the people running the convention. I don’t mean to sound condescending, but your reaction and their reaction, which are one in the same, is not how things work in the world.

Let’s say someone came into a restaurant and was served bad food and management said “Well I’m sorry you don’t like, but that’s your opinion. You can always eat somewhere else.” You better believe that person is going to be angry and that restaurant is going to lose money. That is not proper customer service. It’s blatantly rude, unprofessional, and immature. Even if you think the criticism you get is wrong, which does happen, you still say “I’m sorry you had a bad experience, we’ll do everything we can to improve things next time.” It’s a fact that yes, you can’t make everyone happy. That does not mean that you become confrontational about it. You don’t take it personally. You take it in stride with a smile and move on. But at the same time, if you have repeated complaints, which there is a history of such that has been presented here, you have to acknowledge that you are in fact likely doing something wrong. Being a mature adult means admitting mistakes when you make them, and again, not getting defensive or confrontational.

Sorry for the late response (was at Sakura-Con!), but yes, by all means, feel free to quote whatever you’d like from and link this post and anything I’ve linked myself. I’d love to see your article when it’s finished as well. If you have any questions, feel free to email me!

I was there for a little bit on Saturday and Sunday, and somehow missed them both days.
I’m a bit disappointed, as I was hoping I could do some damage control. Hopefully the rumors of the van getting towed are true… But I cannot think of any reason that they would have been towed.

Jiminy Cricket. I’m now reconsidering my decision to go to the con in 2013 :/ I’m spreading the word about it to my friends, too.

Also, the last picture of Loki is actually my friend McCall! He made the cosplay from scratch himself; and if you would, I’m sure he’d appreciate you linking to his roleplay account, cordiallycarnivorous.tumblr.com, to give him credit for it c:

Ah, well, regardless of what you end up deciding, I’m glad I could inform you (and your friends?) on the situation last year!

It’s really a shame about Aki Con though. October is a slow convention month for anime cons and it’d be great if I could keep them on my list, but I can’t in good conscience support their management after all that went down.

Thanks for the identity of the Loki cosplayer, btw! A link has been added to the photo’s caption.

Uwahhh funny how I was researching AA and came across.
It’s a pretty old topic (2 years wow), but I was a volunteer at Aki-Con and I’m sorely embarrassed by my/our behavior at the Con. I volunteered for 15 hours there (minor volunteer), and it was pretty disastrous. Even the (volunteering) staff were very confused about the whole thing and upset about volunteers. It was difficult because nobody listened to volunteers and tried to find ways around things like badge checks (arguing a lot). The volunteers had no real direction and terrible communication. We had 2-hour shifts at each location. Becoming a volunteer was a really weird and badly done process as well.

If anybody is interested in hearing about what happened, or my full account, I’d be glad to talk about it though! Just respond to this comment.

I was in a lot of places during the con. I remember I was wearing my favorite clothes/cosplay at the time and it’s still quite embarrassing to wear them… It was a struggle at the following Sakura-con and I’m not sure if I want to repeat again haha…

Well, this is absolutely horrifying. I don’t know how many of you have heard, but this year at Aki-con a young woman was drugged and raped by Leslie B. Shotwell, AKA Victor Malice of the Aki-con forums and a guest/personal friend of the convention. I had considered protesting outside the convention last year, but if this convention is held in 2014 I WILL be there with this guy’s mugshot on a sign and a loud and clear message to the public.

Here is the link to the Anime News Network article on the issue. A line has been crossed and this convention needs to be gone.

Yup, I’ve been keeping up with it since the Goddammit, Aki Con Tumblr picked up on it. Aki Con’s poor response just highlights their lack of common sense, lack of compassion for their fellow human, and disturbing inability to run a proper convention. I’m really hoping they don’t manage to run a 2014 con. :/

Wow…. I know this is an older post, but it’s seriously helpful. We’ve been attending Sakura Con since 2012 and love it. We were thinking of trying Aki Con this year, but after reading this and several other reviews… No way. We’ll stick to Sakura Con. I actually remember Aki Con handing us their crap as we left.
Thanks so much for this account.

I’m glad people are still finding this post. Aki Con definitely hasn’t learned anything from 2012’s or 2013’s disasters, and I feel pretty strongly now that they’ll never acknowledge their problems under their current con heads.

It’s really unfortunately since there aren’t that many other anime conventions in the area, though there are several conventions of other genres. Kuronekocon’s all the way out in Spokane and ChibiChibiCon’s a very, very small one-day thing. There are some cons in Vancouver if you’re willing to travel a bit though!

So I just stumbled upon this. I purchased a 3 day pass for Aki-con months ago (probably almost a year ago, now, something like 9 or 10 months.) because Sakura-con had already passed me by and I wanted to go to a convention this year. So Aki-con 2014 is in like a month, and I was planning on going. Reading this (and several other sites where people are complaining about how unprofessional and bad it is) has made me kind of hesitant, however. It’s way to late to get a refund and I don’t want to waste $40, and i’ve already got my cosplay together and everything… All of this negative feedback and whatnot makes me feel like I might not have a good time, though. Should I really not go?

Since you’ve already paid (and supported the con by paying), I’d say go ahead and go and try to enjoy yourself. Many regular attendees have told me that they enjoy the con and have lots of fun there and that’s fine! I believe them! — I just want people to be aware, if possible, of the management they’re supporting.

In the 2013, in addition to continual mistreatment of and negligence towards artists, there was this poorly handled incident. So yeah, just be aware of stuff! If you do decide to go, I hope you can manage to have a good time!

Yeah, I read about that. It does make me a little nervous but, I’m going with a friend and I am not of legal drinking age anyway – nonetheless I’ll be sure to be safe. I think in the future I will just go to Sakura-con and Comic-con, because even if I have a good time I don’t want to support a group that manages things so poorly and has made so many people unhappy. I’ll probably go this year because I paid and everything (though if that many people show up without badges, the fact that I paid will probably annoy me) but thank you for your review and response, since it helps me be more aware and careful.